Game Changer (23 page)

He caught sight of Lucinda standing in the doorway, her ear cocked as though she'd been hanging on every word. “Yeah, let's do that. I'll call you later. There's no privacy here anyway.”

***

Harper pressed the sleep button on her tablet and stared at the blank screen.

What the hell just happened?

It didn't make sense how angry he was about her taking his suggestion and running with it. They were friends. They'd tried sex and it'd sucked. Big deal. She hadn't even been serious about the casual sex thing, anyway. The idea of sex had no appeal, and it wasn't merely a hormonal thing. Would she ever feel like a sexual being again? Maybe, but she just couldn't fathom making herself vulnerable to a man's judgment about her body.

For the rest of the afternoon, she fought to stay focused on her work at the bar, but her thoughts wouldn't stop drifting to the argument with Brandon. It was the first time they'd argued since becoming friends, short of the brief snipping they'd done over text messages when he got the invitation to her birthday, and it left her feeling anchorless and out-of-sorts. Even Bailey mentioned it, as well as a couple regular customers who'd noticed her staring off into space.

Being a Wednesday, the cancer support group was meeting in the upstairs banquet room. Harper drifted up there, listened in for a while, but she couldn't stop her mind from wandering. Not only to Brandon, but to herself and what she wanted. Was she an asexual being now, as she'd espoused? Or was that the easy answer—the fearful answer.

There was only one viable way to find out.

She slipped away from the meeting and into her apartment, to her room. The low, afternoon sun cast her bedroom in a buttery fog of light and shadow. She set her phone on the vanity, then braced her hands against the wood and looked at herself in the mirror, at her eyes, the creased lines of skin at the corners of her eyes and mouth, the sunspots on her cheeks.

Her hair tumbled over her shoulders in a cascade of bottled blonde highlights. She looked good and she felt good—better than good. She felt real, secure in her bones in a way that she never had in youth, when she'd had those ticking time bomb breasts and reproductive tissue. She felt like a woman; she really did. So she didn't have breasts anymore. Who the fuck cared?

“You still care,” she said into the mirror.

She hated that she couldn't give up caring yet. She would. She'd be fierce in her fight to crush her vanity. She'd figure out how to crush her fear of sex, too. That was the opposite of how she wanted to live her life. Contrary to what she'd told Brandon, she wasn't yet ready for sex with a man, even casual sex while clothed, but what she was ready to start doing was loving her body again in a real way.

With her eyes still on her reflection, she stepped back until her legs hit the bed. Then she fell back onto the duvet. She pushed with her feet until she'd scooted her body fully on the bed, then she took a deep breath and smoothed her hand over her belly and into her pants.

She curved her palm over her mound, letting her fingers tangle in her hair.

She pushed a finger between her folds and ran it along the side of her clit. Electricity jolted through her body. She groaned out loud, her toes curling. Guess she had some feeling left down there after all. So much for being a non-sexual being.

She swirled her finger over her clit, building the pressure inside her, losing herself to the pleasure of it until she needed even more.

Breathless and flushed, she rolled to her side and leapt from the bed. From the box below her bed, she pulled out a dildo, a realistic, rubber one with a suction at the base. Working on autopilot so she wouldn't have the mental space to talk herself out it, she did what she'd always done with the toy. She slammed the suction end down on her vanity bench, creating an obscene sight. A giant silicon cock rising from the wood.

She liberally lubed it up, then tore off her pants and lubed herself up, taking the time to rub her clit and revive the sparks she'd felt while lying on the bed.

When she set the lube on the vanity, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. She was a different woman from only moments earlier. She was visibly aroused, her cheeks pink, her eyes dilated. Straddling the bench, she positioned the tip of the toy at her pussy entrance and locked eyes with herself in the mirror.

This was what it looked like to be fierce about her own happiness. This was what it meant to take control of her pleasure. She sunk onto the shaft, her lips parting as it stretched and filled her. She couldn't keep eye contact with herself; the sensations were all too much. She threw her head back as her thighs touched the bench and she seated herself to the hilt.

Groaning, tears flooded her eyes. It was so good, yet so hollow a feeling. Full, yet so empty. Not even close to what her body really craved.

She lifted slowly, then sank down again, harder. And then again and again, simulating a fast, hard fuck. Simulating what she really needed. Another body in the room with her, another person desiring her, two souls connecting. She needed to be taken by a man. She needed to be made love to.

At least she'd answered one question today. Brandon had been right—she was still very much a woman in all the ways that mattered.

The next time she sunk down, she stayed there. Her hand darted between her spread legs. Her fingers found her clit. She rubbed a tiny circle over her pleasure center and closed her eyes, digging for relief. She rolled her hips, rubbing against the cock as her fingertips worked at a feverish pace.

Her body wasn't making this easy. She concentrated hard, her eyes squeezed shut, her body tense, her breathing shallow. She needed to make this happen for herself. A first step toward sexual rebirth. She visualized men she'd known, great lays of her past. She imagined porn scenes that had gotten her blood pumping once upon a time. She pictured Brandon's cock. She pictured him kissing her on the ice during their one-on-one game. Him, kissing her in front of Locks after beating up those bikers. Him, kissing her while she lay in bed the night before he'd left town after her surgery when he thought she was sleeping.

Then she vanquished every one of those thoughts, because they didn't matter. They were toxic bullshit, part of the noise keeping her from moving on. So she pictured nothing, and though her wrist was tiring and the lube was drying, she kept at it, for no reason other than that she deserved this.

She felt the first stirrings of her release and grasped it tight in her mind's eye. She rocked her hips again with small thrusting moves as her fingers rubbed. Clenching her teeth, not breathing, she commanded her muscles to let her do this for herself. Then she shattered, crying out with a feral growl. She threw her head back and let it all go. Her body pulsed, sending her on a high that was cruelly fleeting.

When she landed and started breathing normally again, she realized she was crying. The hollowness returned, overwhelming in its loneliness. That orgasm had been too hard to achieve and it had been over too fast—and it was nothing like what she actually needed. She felt gross and sad and unlovable, just a woman sitting on a fake cock in her room while the world passed by outside her brick fortress.

Sniffing, she wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

Toxic bullshit.

She rose off the toy and stood, then pulled it off the bench. She looked at herself in the mirror again, this time with her battle weapon in her hand in the fight to rediscover who she was and what she needed out of life.

She had two weeks until her fortieth birthday, and so much to look forward to. The fishing trip with her friends, the birthday party she was throwing herself at Locks. Her passport was set to arrive any day in the mail, so it was time to book a flight abroad. She could start with Paris. And the whole time, she'd masturbate relentlessly until the orgasms came easily and lasted longer. A burst of laughter bubbled out of her at the ridiculous thought, even as her eyes welled with moisture. What kind of bliss list goal was masturbating?

She cried a little more at that thought, feeling at once both lost and liberated. She might not know who she was yet or where she was headed, but at least she was searching for the answer.

She was in the bathroom, washing the toy, when her tablet chimed with an incoming video chat request. Her stomach dropped. Brandon was the only person who ever requested video chats. She wasn't in any kind of mental place to argue with him again, but she was afraid if she put any more distance between them, she'd only be causing more damage to their already faltering friendship.

She scrambled to get her pants on, then pressed her palm to her chest, took a deep breath, and accepted the call. “Hi.” The smile she'd forced almost turned real at the sight of him smiling right back at her. Almost.

“Hello again,” he said. From the looks of it, he was in his living room, at the sofa, with his laptop most likely on a coffee table. He was dressed in a loose-fitting red tank top and nylon pants, and his hair was damp, as though he was fresh from a shower.

She smoothed her hands over her pants, at a loss of what to say. Luckily, he saved her from it.

“I know I agreed that we should forget the conversation earlier, but I had to call you to say that I'm sorry I upset you. That wasn't my intention. I guess picking out those rings made the whole engagement thing a little too real. You know, for a commitment-phobe like me.”

He accessorized the self-deprecating remark with a disarming, lopsided grin. The kind he used to charm the ladies. Been a while since she'd seen that one. Weird that it left her feeling nostalgic about the way their relationship used to be, about being pined for. What a frivolous thought, one she was totally blaming on her unsatisfying attempt at self-pleasure.

They wouldn't even be having this conversation if he still pined for her, which would've been a shame. Their friendship hadn't been possible until he'd signed on to appear on
Meet the Groom
and she'd gotten her surgery and they'd had mind-bogglingly bad sex. It was as though they'd had to completely remove any possible sexual feelings from the equation in order to see each other clearly.

“You don't have to get engaged, do you?” she said. “There's nothing in the contract saying you have to, right?”

He tipped his head from side to side. “No one can force me to, but they've made it amply clear that it's what they expect from me.”

It frustrated her that he wasn't free to live the carefree life he'd professed to want, now that he was bound so thoroughly to a contract. Too late now to change that or advise him against it.
Like he had asked for your advice in the first place
. They'd fallen into such a comfortable place as friends that she kept forgetting that, in the not-so-distant past, they barely knew each other.

“Which rings did you decide on?” she asked.

“Five gold ones with the most diamonds. Really splashy, yet still on the traditional side. I think the viewers will love them.”

“What about your fiancé? Will she love it?”

“That doesn't much matter, does it?”

The jadedness inherent in the sentiment left a sour taste in her mouth. Where had her life-loving friend gone? “What's gotten into you? Are you okay? Is this still about the rings?”

All she got in reply to those questions was a shrug. If anything, his eyes turned darker, harsher. “You should go on that blind date Presley's trying to set you up on. And don't tell me again that he'll run screaming when he sees your chest. If he's so shallow as to have a problem with you being flat, then you don't need him anyway. One way to look at your situation is that you've got the perfect prospective date screen test built right into your body.”

Hello, conversational whiplash. He was right about her having a built-in test to weed out shallow men from her dating pool, but that didn't mean the process of watching them run off screaming in the other direction would be easy to watch. Mostly, though, she didn't understand why they needed to revisit any more of their earlier conversation, not when it had ended so badly.

She'd hoped they'd be able to keep the conversation light tonight, if for no other reason than so she could stop feeling anchorless and out-of-sorts. She didn't like clashing with him. He was her rock, her safe place, and she wasn't coping well with having the primary relationship in her life out of balance.

So, as an attempt at levity, she rolled her eyes. “You sound just like my friends.”

He ducked his head and gave her a death stare into the camera. “That's because I am your friend.”

Ouch. “Okay. Sorry. I meant
girlfriends
and what I'd tell them if they gave me that advice was that it's not about finding the right guy. It's about me feeling comfortable being naked in front of someone else again. Especially in front of a man. I'm not brave enough for that. I will be someday, but I'm not yet.”

“I'm a man.”

Goosebumps skittered over her skin. “I'm well aware.”

“You could get naked in front of me so you can see it's no big deal. Then you wouldn't be able to spew that toxic bullshit fear at yourself anymore. You could see that you really are that brave already.”

What had gotten into him? Where was her sweet, supportive friend? She didn't know how to interpret the gleam in his eye or why he was pushing her today. Why he was back to that old, relentless intensity.

“I'll show you my amputation if you show me yours,” he said in a disingenuous singsong tone.

Determined to lighten the mood, though her heart pounded at the mere thought of bearing her body to him, she grinned and waggled a finger at the camera. “That's not fair. You don't have anything I haven't seen already.”

The smile he gave her in response seemed genuine and softened his features. “That's true, but on the other hand, you don't have anything at all to show me, so what's the big deal, surfboard?”